safari problems on leopard

recently i have started to have my first issues with my new imac. when clicking on the safari icon there is a definite time lag to get to the default home page and i get the coloured circle, when i enter an item in the search box after the first couple of letters i get another time lag and the coloured circle. 50% of the time safari kicks into action with no further problems, and 50% of the time i get 'safari quit unexpectedly'. does anyone know what the problem is and how to resolve it?

I am a total newb to mac-forums (less than 24 hours) and this post alone will make it completely worth it. As I was reading this, my software update dock icon started bouncing! Guess what? It had Safari 3.2 in it!

I casually unchecked the Safari update and will proceed with the rest.

Thanks a million!

Incidentally, IMO those folks not-to-hot on Safari are spot on. I am always amazed at MacWorld and others for giving it great reviews. If I had to rank it among the top 5 most popular browsers, it'd be ranked 6th. Slow, featureless, and now unstable - what more could we ask for?